EMERSON Essay Example For Students

EMERSON Essay Society never advances. It recedes as fast on one side as itgains on the other. Although written long ago these wordsby, Ralph Waldo Emerson still hold true today. Everyday insociety people are making improvements, however, butthese improvements also have equal drawbacks. Today weare using cutting edge technology to improve every aspect ofour daily lives. For instance in todays society the fields ofCommunication and Medicine are constantly advancing yetthey both create significant losses. Technology has helpedincrease the speed of communication and decrease its cost. However, at the same time it has caused people to becomemore impersonal with each other. In earlier times the majorform of communication was for people to visit each otherand go to public meeting places. One of the next majoradvances was the telephone. Due to the telephone peopleno longer went to the public meeting places as often as theyused to. As time goes on, new advances still allow people tocontact and communicate with each other more easily. These advances such as faxes, beepers, and electronic mail,although seemingly making life easier, each help to decreasethe earlier forms of communication. The field of medicine,like the field communication, also displays what Emersonwas trying to say. This field too, which had many advances,has also caused many difficulties. As scientists and doctorstry to come up with cures for the many diseases we havetoday, they are also making new ones. For example, whenscientists went to Africa in search of a cure for a disease,they came back with monkeys that were contaminated withthe Emboli virus. Today in Russia there are military baseswhere Russian scientists are creating thousands of germs andviruses to use in germ warfare. These germs and viruses arecapable of killing thousands of people instantly. Astechnology continues to advance and society movesforward, people continue to use the less personal forms ofcommunication, and create new problems in the field ofmedicine. The fear of becoming a society, whichcommunicates only through machines, and creates newdisease, is becoming greater with time. For all of societygains there are equal drawbacks. So as in Ralph WaldoEmerson words society never advances.